The advantages of keeping a motor vehicle, such as an automobile, clean are well documented. Surface dirt can mar the finish of an otherwise new car. For this reason many people are quite scrupulous in keeping their car clean.
Accordingly, the art contains many designs for car washes. Most often, these car washes are of the fully automated type in which an attendant sets the system for the type of vehicle and the type of wash and treatment to be carried out. There are some car washing systems in which the customer can select his own process. Many of these devices are complicated and expensive, and may require complicated sensors, systems and the like to operate.
While successful and well accepted, these known car washing systems have a drawback in that the vehicle owner must bring his vehicle to the car wash, and then wait in line for his vehicle to be treated. Many people simply choose not to have their car washed rather than put up with such inconveniences.
An alternative to having a car washed in such an automated environment is to simply wash the car at home, and many people opt for this approach.
However, washing a car at home, while overcoming the above-stated problems associated with the automated car wash systems, presents some problems of its own.
For example, many vehicles are incompletely washed due to the inconvenience of applying soap while the vehicle is still wet, or of washing the vehicle and keeping it wet enough for proper washing. Still further, it can be inefficient to keep the car properly wet while carrying out a proper washing process. This may require that the washing process be stopped while a wetting process is carried out, and vice versa. This can be inefficient, and may result in the soap and water being applied in improper amounts and at improper times.
If the car is washed at home, the vehicle is often wet with a garden hose, which can be inefficient in the ways discussed above, and can be wasteful of water if the hose is left on while the other steps in the process are carried out.
While the automated car washing systems can be modified to accommodate vehicles of varying size and shape, this modification comes at the expense of complication in the system. The same is true for the use of water in such systems; that is, the water usage can be varied to fit the particular situation, but only because the overall system includes complicated control circuitry.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that permits a car to be washed at home, but with results that are similar to those that can be obtained using an automated car washing apparatus.
Even further to the above, there is a need for such a home car washing system that permits the efficient use of water and the efficient carrying out of the car washing process, but without undue complications and expenses.